Central Floridian of the Year, 2006: Tavistock owner Joe Lewis

OPINION & ANALYSIS

Visionary turns `medical city' into reality

January 14, 2007|By Michael E. Griffin, Deputy Editorial Page Editor

The drive to win a medical school for the University of Central Florida was stuck in neutral.

Supporters, most notably UCF's President John Hitt and Provost Terry Hickey, were spreading the word in Central Florida and Tallahassee, arguing the state's severe shortage of doctors could be solved by building two new medical schools -- one at UCF and the other at Florida International University.

They had a flashy PowerPoint presentation. They had dire projections from the American Association of Medical Colleges. They had startling population projections that showed Florida's doctors were aging and retiring as more and more people moved to the state.

But they weren't convincing many folks, particularly Gov. Jeb Bush.

"I must have given that talk 60 times," Hickey said. "We weren't getting any traction, until we started talking about Joe's vision."

"Joe" is Joe Lewis, the quiet billionaire whose Tavistock Holding Co. is developing Lake Nona, one of Central Florida's most exclusive communities. Lewis' vision was to build the medical school at Lake Nona and light the fuse on an economic boom for the entire region. The medical school, Lewis and other Tavistock executives argued, would attract biomedical and life-science research facilities. That research would spin off high-technology businesses and attract even more companies here. A biomedical "cluster" could form and that would be worth billions of dollars to the local and state economies.

Start throwing around phrases like "billions of dollars" and you get people's attention -- particularly Jeb Bush's. Lewis backed up his vision by donating $12.5 million of his own money and land to the medical school effort, promising to match the donations of other Central Florida heavyweights.

The economic-impact argument pressed by Lewis swayed Bush, and the State University System's Board of Governors approved the UCF medical school in March.

"You can't overstate the value of Joe's contribution," Hitt said. "I don't believe we'd have a medical school if it wasn't for Joe Lewis."

Winning the medical school could easily have been the biggest Central Florida story of 2006, but it was only the beginning. Lewis' prediction of the medical school as a magnet for economic development was realized seven months later when the San Diego area-based Burnham Institute for Medical Research chose Lake Nona for the site of its East Coast headquarters. Burnham will be joined by a University of Florida research center. Now it appears a veterans hospital will go there, and the Nemours Foundation is considering building a children's hospital and research center there.

"This wasn't just about building a medical school, it was about transforming the economy," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. "And it simply doesn't happen without Joe Lewis' strong will to make it happen."

It is for his vision, passion and generous philanthropy in support of a host of Central Florida causes that the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board names Joe Lewis Central Floridian of the Year.

Lewis shuns the limelight

"Joe Lewis is a true visionary. I have learned a lot from him," Bush said. "Orlando is very, very lucky to have him as a resident. Trust me, very, very fortunate."

With his political contacts from Orlando to Tallahassee and Washington, no private person had greater influence in Central Florida last year than Lewis. Yet he remains a mystery to many who live here. Lewis is far from a recluse -- he travels the world extensively and enjoys a robust lifestyle of golf and tennis -- but he shuns the limelight.

Rasesh Thakkar, Tavistock CEO, said Lewis is more concerned about results than glory. Think of him as the anti-Donald Trump. When he gave $7.5 million to the local M.D. Anderson cancer center in 1997, Lewis declined to have part of the project named for him. Instead, the center created the Charles Lewis Institute, in memory of Lewis' father, who died of cancer in 1987.

"He doesn't really care about the publicity," said Thakkar, a UCF alumnus who has worked for Lewis for 19 years. "To him, it is a distraction."

Avoiding distractions has helped Lewis become one of the richest people on the planet. Forbes magazine ranked him the 486th richest person in the world with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Thakkar pointed out that figure is a guess, because neither the company nor Lewis release earnings.

Still, that's not bad for a guy who left high school at age 15 to work in his father's London catering business. Lewis built that business into one of Britain's most successful, pioneering themed restaurants that are common today. Lewis expanded from the restaurant business into marketing luxury services to tourists and then into currency trading. He is the principal of the Tavistock Group, which owns more than 100 companies around the world.

Married with two children, the 69-year-old Lewis divides his time between three homes -- in the Bahamas, Argentina and Isleworth near Orange County's town of Windermere.